CNS photo/Giving Films

NEW YORK (CNS)—As its title suggests, a trip to the pearly gates and back is the highlight of “90 Minutes in Heaven” (Samuel Goldwyn). Writer-director Michael Polish’s drama is based on the true story of a Baptist minister and his near-death experience.

Don Piper lived to tell the story of his celestial journey in a 2004 memoir, which has sold 7 million copies. The screen version of his bestseller underlines the power of Christian spirituality and the rewards of perseverance.

As portrayed by Hayden Christensen (light years removed from his starring turn in the “Star Wars” prequels), Don is an earnest and sincere pastor. He’s also a loving husband to spouse Eva (Kate Bosworth) and an attentive father to his three children.

In 1989, returning home after speaking at a prayer meeting, Don has his date with destiny. On a rain-swept bridge, an 18-wheeler plows into his car, crushing the vehicle. Don is pronounced dead, and his car—with Don still trapped inside—is covered with a tarp, awaiting removal.

As the eponymous time period passes, Dick Onarecker (Michael Harding), a fellow minister, approaches and asks permission from law enforcement to pray over the body. He proclaims that Don’s sins are forgiven, sings a song of praise over the supposed corpse—and then, inexplicably, Don stirs to life.

Don himself is bewildered and bemused, for he has spent the past hour-and-a-half in ecstasy above the clouds. In keeping with other near-death reports, heaven is portrayed as a place bathed in golden light, where loved ones approach to greet the new arrival. “Heaven was, without a doubt, the greatest family reunion of all,” Don says.

However, just as he is about to pass through the portals of paradise—approached, oddly enough, via a yellow brick road—Don is returned to earth.

What follows is Don’s personal Calvary, a torturous and protracted journey to recovery from devastating injuries. The physical pain is unbearable, and the emotional toll on his family even greater.

Over four months in the hospital and 34 surgeries, Don is wracked by his supernatural experience, telling no one of his vision. “Survival was going to be difficult, because heaven was so glorious,” he admits. He longs to return to the afterlife, rather than stick around on Earth.

It is up to Eva and a support system of family and friends—who organize around-the-clock prayer vigils—to restore Don’s will to live.

A feisty hospital volunteer, Jay (Fred Dalton Thompson), doesn’t mince words. “You’re denying others the right to help,” he tells Don. “Let them in! People are God’s hands to meet your needs and answer your prayers.”

They do, and eventually Don decides to share his “sacred secret.” But here, “90 Minutes” departs from a similar faith-based movie, 2014’s “Heaven Is for Real.”

By contrast with that earlier title’s lively stories concerning 4-year-old Colton Burpo and his “visits” with Jesus, we learn precious little of Don’s observations. The mere glimpse of “heaven” given us in this movie is, ultimately, unsatisfying.

Nonetheless, “90 Minutes” does offer an inspiring lesson for adults and older teens about faith, hope and persistence. Despite some hints at underlying theological differences, moreover, considered as a whole, the film’s evangelical viewpoint on prayer and the promise of eternal life is mostly consonant with Catholic doctrine.

The film contains disturbing images and some mature themes. The Catholic News Service classification is A-II—adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13—parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

“A Walk in the Woods” (Broad Green)

Seeking a remedy for his writer’s block, an aging travel author (Robert Redford) decides to defy his physical limitations by hiking the 2,200-mile-long Appalachian Trail. Yielding to his concerned wife’s (Emma Thompson) insistence that he include a companion on the trip, he reluctantly accepts the company of the only volunteer he can find—a friend from his past (Nick Nolte) with whom, partly by choice, he has long been out of touch. As the domesticated scribe and his rolling stone of a sidekick lumber through the forest, they compare notes on life, all too many of which treat sexuality—including the bedroom escapades of their shared youth—as a form of entertainment.

In adapting Bill Bryson’s 1998 memoir, director Ken Kwapis takes viewers on a generally pleasant, though excessively talky, expedition through landscapes that vary from the soothing to the magnificent. Yet, even as one sequence of his film celebrates marital fidelity in the face of temptation, another winks at a potential dalliance with a married woman. Defective values, including an ambivalent attitude toward adultery, a nongraphic scene of aberrant sexual activity, a glimpse of partial rear nudity, much off-color humor, numerous uses of profanity, frequent rough and crude language.

The Catholic News Service classification is L—limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R—restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

“The Perfect Guy” (Screen Gems)

Stale predictability and slow pacing might appeal to people who prefer generic thrillers without twists and turns. Director David M. Rosenthal and screenwriter Tyger Williams set their plot on a long straightaway as an L.A. exec (Sanaa Lathan) fights off a new boyfriend (Michael Ealy) and their unexpectedly violent romance. Two implied sexual situations, physical violence and fleeting crude and profane language.

The Catholic News Service classification is A-III—adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13—parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

“The Visit” (Universal)

Delivering laughter as well as scares, this horror-comedy will leave audience members entertained yet also scratching their heads as a 15-year-old budding moviemaker (Olivia DeJonge) and her younger brother (Ed Oxenbould), a self-styled rap artist, visit their grandparent’s Pennsylvania farmhouse and record how the elderly couple’s peculiar behavior becomes increasingly menacing.

Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan (“The Sixth Sense”) tries to cover too many bases and triggers some unintended laughter along with the frights and levity that the actors execute with great aplomb. Using the movie-within-a-movie device enables Shyamalan to offer a mild critique of the compulsion to treat life as mere narrative, to filter every experience through a lens, screen or other electronic device; nevertheless, any serious theme is eclipsed by the tonally disparate film’s humor and scare quotients. Much terrifying behavior and some nongraphic violence, an instance of rough language and one rough gesture, some crude and crass language, several instances of profanity, brief rear female nudity, a drug reference, a suicidal character, and some sexual banter, mostly contained in rap music lyrics.

The Catholic News Service classification is A-III—adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13—parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

“We Are Your Friends” (Warner Bros.)

The relationship between an aspiring DJ (Zac Efron) and his musical mentor (Wes Bentley) is threatened when the protege falls for his patron’s live-in girlfriend (Emily Ratajkowski). Alongside this casually physical love triangle, director and co-writer Max Joseph sets up a hackneyed conflict between the youthful hero’s artistic ambitions and the pressure to settle for a more mundane but practical lifestyle—in his case by joining his trio of closest friends (Jonny Weston, Shiloh Fernandez and Alex Shaffer) in working for a shady real estate operator (Jon Bernthal). Genuine moral values occasionally surface in this tepid, noncommittal drama. But for the most part, its characters move through their shallow lives in a party-craving stupor from which even the forceful intrusion of love and death barely awakens them. Benignly viewed drug use, cohabitation and premarital relations, brief semi-graphic bedroom scenes, upper female nudity, a couple of profanities, pervasive rough and crude language.

The Catholic News Service classification is L—limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R—restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.